Diva Challenge #285: Relax, Bro. And Sis.

Sometimes it’s a good thing to have somebody point out the obvious to you: This week the Diva reminded us Zentangle lovers again that Zentangle is actually about the zen while you “work” and not about the result at the end. While I do know this… I’ll be honest with you: I do care more about the outcome than about the process. Willingly. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the Zen while tangling, that I still have it and enjoy a lot and it is a reason while I enjoy tangling so much. However… if I don’t like my work while I work on it, it spoils the Zen for me. It’s already gotten better, but I don’t think this will ever change for me. By now I almost immediately enter Zen when tangling (at least that’s how it feels like) and even if the flow is broken from stopping after one section of the string, I’ll enter again soon enough. That’s why I don’t fuss over it all too much.

This week’s task, creating a REAL Zentangle therefore was a little difficult for me. But I still managed to come up with something and I think it’s quite interesting. I’ll explain after I have shown you my contribution for this week’s challenge:

When I thought about how to tackle this challenge I remembered that a real Zentangle is not planned. That’s why I took out my copy of One Zentangle a Day (I WILL continue with it, I haven’t given up hope of ever finishing it.. ^^). I once made an index of all the patterns inside (which if you know me by now OF COURSE isn’t yet finished). I numbered all the patterns in the book (there are 67 patterns) and by using random.org I chose the tangles to fill my string. It USED to be a simple string, but I kept on adding and adding new sections because there were some tangles such as Tat that I never tangled before (no wonder it looks the way it does) and which I tried to hide. Which left so much empty space. Which is something I didn’t really like So.. ok, I do admit it: it’s not completele unplanned. But I did my best! And one unplanned thing actually happened which is quite funny: I seperated the “organic” looking tangles from the more “geometric” looking tangles. This was no conscious decision but one of “I guess it’ll lok good next to XYZ”. In the end, too many tangles found their way onto the tile, again, but whatever. I do find this one quite intresting. And I just love Pepper! ❤

I’ll be off now to prepare for INKTOBER – yes, it’s that time of the year again! I already started thinking about a project a few weeks ago and I can’t wait to get started! I’m SO excited to see what great art will be posted next month! If you don’t know yet about Inktober, check out my introduction post from last year. This year I want to finish Inktober, let’s see if I can finally finish something… ^^; If you’re wondering what I’m going to do: You’ll read more about this on October 1st. I hope you’ll check back!

Are you going to play in this year’s Inktober, too? I’d love to hear about it now so I can add you to my watchlist. I’ll be tweeting Inktober art, too, so if you’re interested in it and are not yet @tangleoflines me on Twitter, think about it. 🙂

This is such a lovely tile with a playful mix of organic and geometric tangles:) I like the layering of the larger geometric tangles and the way the organic tangles “peek out” from underneath. The unplanned design is so whimsical and fun. Great contribution!

Tangling in Berlin, Germany. Love Zentangle and Zentangle-inspired art, drawing ATCs, photography, the game of Go (囲碁), Japan, Japanese and Japanese culture, and way too many other things for the amount of free time that I have.
You can find me in the Zentangle Mosaic app as YvonneLi.